Yoder is the only member of Kansas's all-Republican congressional delegation seeking reelection in a district won by Clinton in 2016.
What's more, the state's 3rd District includes Kansas City and its surrounding suburbs, making it a prime target for Democrats this year.
Yoder faces a challenge from Democrat Sharice Davids, who, if elected, would be one of the first Native-American women in Congress.
Recent public polls show Davids with a solid lead in the race. A survey released late last month by Emerson College put her ahead of Yoder by 12 points, and The Cook Political Report has for over a month kept the race in the "Lean Democratic" column.
At the same time, the NRCC has drastically scaled back its financial support for Yoder - a sign that the GOP House campaign arm may be losing confidence in his prospects.
I love it, of course.
Take nothing for granted, folks. Get out there this Tuesday and VOTE.
Yes sir, our own Senate race between Claire McCaskill and Josh Hawley is highlighted in a New York Times YouTube video presently. It asks a great question.
It's not a big surprise they'd cover this and for a couple reasons, at least. First, it's thought to be a close race. Second, it could be pivotal in the Republicans' keeping or losing control of the Senate.
Somewhat unusually, it's in the annual Fall arts coverage special pullout section of the paper. I would have expected it in the travel section. It's called the Fine Arts & Exhibitions section. That nearly makes it even better.
It's quite good. You might check it out if you haven't already.
(My own photo, above, by the way, from my photography blog: KC Photog Blog. Just saying).
They've been behind a new airport for us from the start and they are just not going to let up on it, that seems clear. Here's their latest contribution.
Kansas City’s economy will fly higher than the rest of the nation in coming years, as construction of a new airport terminal masks the region’s “disappointing” comparison to similar markets, said a forecast released Friday.
The $1.4 billion project at Kansas City International Airport stands at the center of economist Frank Lenk’s outlook for the region in 2019 and 2020. Lenk provided his annual economic projections at a Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday at the Kansas City Marriott Downtown.
Apparently, just building, building an airport makes an area's economy soar.
This is the normal churn of an active economy, saidLenk’s prepared report, which was provided to The Star ahead of his presentation. This is the part that slays me. KCI is something different.
“Because the funds to build the airport are coming from the airlines and not local taxpayers, this expenditure brings net new dollars to the regional economy that would not otherwise be expected,” Lenk’s report said.
Specifically, KCI’s new terminal means construction jobs. Spending by those workers means more jobs in other fields.
Wow. "...the funds to build the airport are coming from the airlines and not local taxpayers."
O.M.G.
I don't know where the author of the article and the Star think those airlines get their funds Someone needs to tell them about plane tickets. One day very soon we'll have conversations beginning like this: "Remember when it didn't used to cost that much to fly out of Kansas City?"
And the second part of that? Where "Spending by those (construction) workers means more jobs in other fields."
That's another beauty.
How much do people think these construction workers make, anyway?
And then, if they weren't building the airport, do people really think these same construction workers would be just sitting around, not working, not making their own paychecks?
Really?
Construction workers, getting their regular paychecks that they would be getting anyway are going to lift the Kansas City economy? Really? That's how that will work?
And check out that cost.
Before this was voted on and passed, it was promised it would't be that expensive.
Before the vote, I said it would hit a 1 billion dollar cost.
Now?
Ground isn't even plowed and it's going to cost 1.4 billion.
As if that, the cost, isn't enough, our same paper posted this 4 months ago.
If you aren't familiar with the Republican Party's efforts and work, over many years, to disenfranchise anyone and everyone who doesn't think, and so, vote, as they wish, you need to pay attention.
The fact is, Republicans have been gerrymandering the nation and for at least decades.
What is gerrymandering someone might ask? Defined, it is
"...In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice that attempts to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries to create partisan-advantaged districts.
The fact is, what they, Republicans, have been doing and trying to do is to get anyone and everyone who might not be aligned with their voting patterns, from being able to vote. This would include the following groups, proven, historically:
The entire city has 27000 residents. 60% of those residents are Hispanic. So if you're white and Right Wing and Republican, what to do?? Why, move the one polling place, as it says, outside the city limits.
And it's how they got a man with a horrible reputation even in his own political party and with zero government experience elected to the White House, the highest office in the land even though he got at least 3 million less popular votes than his political opponent. Sure, you get out-voted but hey, load the voting districts your way and voila! The Electoral College makes you President anyway!
And sure, Democrats are legally capable of gerrymandering also but the fact is, Republicans have used it and been using it to load their--our--voting districts for years now, as I've said and shown here.
Not done there, not done with just gerrymandering, this political party took it further, much further, too. Not only do they use these voter ID laws to help them in elections, disenfranchising fellow citizens in the process, but they've publicly admitted it, as well.
There is a great "meme" out there on social networks I've seen recently. It asks, how bad is your political party if your way of "success" is to keep Americans from voting?
And the answer is, bad. Really, really bad. And not in a Michael Jackson way, by any stretch.
So what all this means, what we need to do, as a nation, as a people is, first, get the Republicans out of power, out of office, and then, once and for all, make gerrymandering and voter ID laws, both, illegal. We need to truly, truly take back the vote.
We can do this.
We must.
Vote November 6!
And VOTE BLUE!! Vote Democratic! Then let's work and fight for change.
To what other conclusion can one come about AARP, ostensibly named the "American Association for Retired People" than that they are useless, ineffectual?
Sure, you can get discounts to buy things if you want, if you join as a member but when it comes down to representing, really representing those "retired people", do they do anything?
When one political party in this nation not only comes out for taking funds from even just Social Security, let alone Medicare and then Medicaid, too, all so already-wealthy people can get still more of the nation's wealth, does the AARP do anything? Do they speak up? Do they attack even the IDEA of depleting the Social Security fund, let alone the political party that wants to do this?
Oh, hell no.
No, they don't.
Not only do they not attack the idea or the person proposing it or the idea, AARP does----nothing.
And it's not that this has only happened once that a person in that political party has tried attacking, depleting the Social Security fund, as just one example, it keeps happening, again and again, over the years.
AARP?
Silent. Deafeningly silent. Not a word.
If you're a member and get their magazine in the mail, what are the articles about? Some examples:
--Commit Yourself to an Exercise Routine
--Get Financial Advice Without Going Broke
--Test Your Knowledge of Voting Facts
--Find the Best Health Care Where You Live
And this one. I love this next one:
--Why a Vacation Might Make You Feel Better
Like we need an article for that.
All no doubt fine articles but let me say this again---ONE POLITICAL PARTY IS REPEATEDLY, OVER THE YEARS, WORKING, FIGHTING TO DEPLETE THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND.
And if you're an AARP member, you wouldn't know it.
It's almost as though they don't want to upset or alienate any people in that political party--let's go ahead and say it---Republicans, either members or, God forbid, members of Congress.
Sure, don't upset any Republican or Republicans, even though they vote and have voted, time and again, to drain the Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid funds for other purposes.
And the latest use or attempted use of Social Security funds?
Well, those pesky Republicans voted for TAX CUTS FOR THE ALREADY-WEALTHY AND CORPORATIONS earlier this year. It's blowing up the deficit so THEY WANT TO TAKE MONEY FROM SOCIAL SECURITY and what they call "entitlements" to pay for those now deficits. Don't believe it? Check out the very recent headline:
You would think that, since they're supposed to be for retired people--it is in their name, after all--that each and every time a politician, any politician, from any party, even mentioned, once, aloud, draining the Social Security fund or Medicare or Medicaid, that that same organization would be screaming bloody murder to its members to, for heaven sake, contact their representative and express their disbelief and strong support for these programs.
But AARP?
Not a word. Never. Not a peep.
But if you want a tote bag with your new membership and 5% off your next purchase of some tchotchke or a roadside atlas or advice on why you might enjoy a vacation, well, then, AARP is just the group for you.
Yes sir, the one and only New York Times has a very prominent, front sports page article on our own Kansas City Chiefs, our Patrick Mahomes and how we naturally, rightly like--love?--him.
Fans of the Kansas City Chiefs, accustomed to football disappointment, now have the most exciting player in the N.F.L. on their team, in their town.
And it's a great and of course, true article, we love our Patrick Mahomes and all this winning he's doing but in the print edition of the paper, the headline reads: "Kansas City finally found something to love."
Excuse me?
Excuse me, New York Times..... Excuse us??
We have LOTS to love around here, make no mistake.
We love our Kansas City Chiefs, for starters. And that's all the time, not just when we're having a stellar season, like right this moment. Sure, we prefer winning them all, including the Super Bowl, like anyone and everyone else but we love our team ALL THE TIME.
Going on, we love our Kansas City Royals. For sure. Absolutely. And that's all the time, too. Sure, we prefer "going all the way" seasons like 1985 and 2015 but we love our team, let there be no doubt.
Going on from there, things we Kansas Citians love:
I saw yet another very privileged, white, middle-class male railing on Facebook about abortion today.
Jeezus Effing C.
Unbelievable.
This guy was a high school friend. I believe he's college educated.
In spite of that education, he rambled something briefly--incoherently?--about "60 million abortions." I've no idea what that was an attempted reference to.
But wow. Freaking wow.
So I decided there needs to be a group for these people.
They need to call it White Male Patriarchy.
WIMP for short.
A white, middle class, at least, if not upper middle-class male, devoid of attachment to the female's situation, of course, since he hasn't and couldn't possibly have or understand that perspective, but also completely void of any lower-class and/or minority situation or issues. But by gosh, rail against abortions! Sure! Makes perfect sense.
The fact is, the numbers of abortions in the nation have been dropping, and steadily, for years.
More importantly, the Right Wing and Republicans have been whittling away at women's legal rights for abortions for years, as we know. Additionally, however, they've also been under-cutting funding for sex education for our children, nationally and locally, in our schools. Added to that, they've been fighting the development and use of "day after" contraception pills, which is really insane. With the availability of these, we could at least reduce, if not even possibly eliminate abortions in the nation if those were available.
That these Republicans today are outraged, OUTRAGED! at the treatment of this, their party's nominee for the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court, this Brett Kavanaugh, in these hearings when they didn't even allow---remember that--didn't even ALLOW hearings for the previous President's pick for the court is the epitome of chutzpah, irony and hypocrisy, all.
I thought Trump gaining the White House would be the worst that could and would happen.
The wealthiest supporter of the GOP in Ohio said Thursday that he is no longer a member of the Republican Party.
"I just decided I'm no longer a Republican," L Brands CEO Leslie Wexner said during a panel discussion at a leadership summit, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
Wexner, who said he's been a Republican since college, added...he "won't support this nonsense in the Republican Party" anymore.
Note, too, these two articles both came out just this week, in the last two days.
A Guide to America's Exploding Defense Budget and Military Failure
Step 1: Buy the most expensive weapons in history. Step 2: Don’t use them, since they mostly don’t work
And before any military patriots or just disbelievers dismiss the article, out of hand, before reading it, they should know it's written by a Veteran and who served in Iraq, on the ground. It's not from some "Left Wing" "librul" they can or should dismiss.
A bit from the article:
This year, President Trump signed the largest defense budget in our history: $700 billion. The budget includes $13.7 billion for 90 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, which according to CNN are “in service and mission capable only 26 percent of the time.” Not a single F-35 jet has yet to see combat duty.
The budget will provide $4.5 billion for the construction of a new Ford class aircraft carrier, $450 million for three Littoral Combat Ships, $4 billion for two new guided missile destroyers, $5.5 billion for two new Virginia Class submarines, and tens of billions more for upgrades and repairs on various aircraft and naval vessels. Two of the guided missile destroyers already in service were involved in deadly collisions with cargo ships in the western Pacific last year. A Navy investigation revealed that for all of the hundreds of billions spent on defense, there was apparently not enough in the budget to provide for adequate training in standing watch and driving Navy combat ships...
He finishes the article perfectly, to me. It's something I've been saying for some time.
Fifteen years in Iraq. Seventeen years in Afghanistan. There is no end in sight.
From 2011 to today, 2018, we more than doubled our national defense budget from 354 billion dollars to 700 billion.
We have no new enemies. No new group has attacked us or is attacking. Or is going to.
We are weakening, actually weakening our nation with all this absurd, obscenely expensive and very wasteful spending.
Understand this:
Our defense budget is very huge, very bloated and very wasteful and is actually making the nation weaker. Not stronger.
A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president. Some of the men who have been elected president have been unscrupulous in certain areas — infidelity, lying, dirty tricks, financial misdeeds — but we’ve never before had the full-spectrum corruption we see in the life of Donald Trump...
...the moral indictment against Mr. Trump is obvious and overwhelming. Corruption has been evident in Mr. Trump’s private and public life, in how he has treated his wives, in his business dealings and scams, in his pathological lying and cruelty, in his bullying and shamelessness, in his conspiracy-mongering and appeals to the darkest impulses of Americans. (Senator Bob Corker, a Republican, refers to the president’s race-based comments as a “base stimulator.”) Mr. Trump’s corruptions are ingrained, the result of a lifetime of habits. It was delusional to think he would change for the better once he became president...
In any case, the Republican Party’s as-yet unbreakable attachment to Mr. Trump is coming at quite a cost. There is the rank hypocrisy, the squandered ability to venerate public character or criticize Democrats who lack it, and the damage to the white Evangelical movement, which has for the most part enthusiastically rallied to Mr. Trump and as a result has been largely discredited. There is also likely to be an electoral price to pay in November.
But the greatest damage is being done to our civic culture and our politics. Mr. Trump and the Republican Party are right now the chief emblem of corruption and cynicism in American political life, of an ethic of might makes right. Dehumanizing others is fashionable and truth is relative. (“Truth isn’t truth,” in the infamous words of Mr. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.) They are stripping politics of its high purpose and nobility....
A warning to my Republican friends: The worst is yet to come. Thanks to the work of Robert Mueller — a distinguished public servant, not the leader of a “group of Angry Democrat Thugs” — we are going to discover deeper and deeper layers to Mr. Trump’s corruption. When we do, I expect Mr. Trump will unravel further as he feels more cornered, more desperate, more enraged; his behavior will become ever more erratic, disordered and crazed.
And the source.
By Peter Wehner
Mr. Wehner served in the previous three Republican administrations and is a contributing opinion writer.
Not only is this obviously and logically an abridgment of people's First Amendment Rights, as the Star so rightly points out, but what, exactly, are we attacking here? What are we, as a city, trying to correct?
If they're out there, possibly humiliating themselves, begging, after all, frequently either in boiling hot or freezing cold temperatures, and harming no one, what's the problem? As a supposed "Christian nation", why wouldn't we leave them alone? Where's the harm? Or are we just ashamed we have poor in our midst and don't want to be reminded? Or, worse, we don't want outsiders, visitors, seeing we have poor?
What is it, exactly, Kansas City?
They inconvenience us while we sit at the traffic lights?
The writer/author Studs Terkel once said he intentionally kept money on him in case he crossed paths with anyone asking for help. He said he knew it was tough out there and they didn't do this because it was fun. Or easy.
But we'll have none of that in our evirons, eh, Kansas City?
How dare they be poor. Or mentally-challenged. Or to have made poor decisions. Or whatever.
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